Mapping entities in conversation text

To prevent your Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) from asking for information that the user has already provided, you can optionally configure entity mapping definitions for the cases configured in your channel. When the IVA creates a case during a chat session, the system applies the associated entity mapping and copies any entities extracted from the user input into the case properties. For example, for a Car Insurance case, you can map the CarModel and CarMake entities to the .CarModel and .CarMake case properties. When these entities are detected in a chat conversation, their values are automatically assigned to the case properties and the system does not ask the user about the car make and model.
Before you begin: For the IVA to respond to user input by creating a case and asking questions, add a conversation to a case type for your application. For more information, see Adding a conversation to a case type.
When a case property has a value stored in it that was mapped from a detected entity, the IVA will skip over this question shape. This prevents the chatbot from asking for information that the user has already provided.
  1. In the header of Dev Studio, click the name of the application, and then click Channels and interfaces.
  2. In the Current channel interfaces section, click the icon that represents your existing Alexa, Unified Messaging, or Web Chatbot channel.
  3. In the channel that you select, click the Behavior tab.
  4. At the top of the preview console, turn on the Show analysis switch.
  5. In the preview console, in the right panel input field, enter a sample question.
    For example: For a car insurance quote, enter: I would like to request a car insurance quote for my Ford Mustang GT..
    Result: The analysis in the preview console shows the sentiment of the user input (positive, negative, neutral), the detected topic, the confidence in the detected topic (as a percentage), and the detected entities.
  6. In the create case section, click the Open response configuration icon.
  7. In the Response configuration window, click the Entities extraction tab.
  8. Add an entity to a case property mapping by clicking Add mapping.
  9. In the Entity list, click an entity.
    For example: To map an entity defined for a car make, select Car Make.
  10. In the Case property list, click a case property that you want to map to the entity.
    For example: To map the Car Make entity to a case type property called Make, select Make.
  11. To add another entity to the case property mapping, repeat steps 8 through 10.
  12. Click Submit.
What to do next: Ensure that the IVA learns from the entities that you mapped to the case type properties by building the text analytics model. For more information, see Applying simulation changes to a text analytics model.